City Won't Reach Goal For Homeless -- But Progress Made After Schell's Pledge

Seven months ago, Mayor Paul Schell pledged to get every homeless woman and child off the streets before Christmas.

For those who operate the shelters that house Seattle's homeless, the words were a call to arms like they had rarely heard before. It impressed some that the mayor of a major U.S. city would raise the profile of an issue many would rather ignore.

To others, his pledge of $500,000 toward the goal made it seem like political grandstanding.

Social-service providers say that come Christmas, there will still be women and children on Seattle streets. They've been saying that for months. The math is simple: too many people, not enough places to sleep.

But as the mayor dedicates a new 25-bed women's shelter tomorrow, many praise the steps the city has taken since Schell made the pledge, even if they have fallen short of the goal. The question now is how hard the city will continue to work after the holiday and the political hoopla have faded.

"A lot of other mayors or previous mayors would not have made that pledge for fear of the ramifications of failure," said Tom Richards, a housing specialist with the Fremont Public Association. "What it did was put a fire underneath a lot of city staff to do something and not go along with business as usual."

But others say if the city were truly committed to fulfilling Schell's pledge it would be spending the kind of money it has on downtown parking garages. While no one is complaining about the extra money, his promise struck some as naive.

"We can't sell short the difference a good new shelter makes, but it is not solving the problem by a long shot," said Michelle Marchand, a spokeswoman for Wheel, a homeless women's advocacy group.

The mayor conceded yesterday that he won't reach his goal.

"It's an ongoing issue," he said. "We are going to have to keep working at it."

The city has increased the number of motel vouchers available for families in need and beefed up a program to prevent evictions. A grant is helping the Salvation Army prepare a 17-bed shelter that should open early next year. Money will go toward expanding hours at the YMCA's daytime program for homeless women. The city also will help open a new referral center for homeless women and children that should take some of the burden off existing programs.

Hammond House is the most tangible result so far. Schell and a group of civic and community leaders will arrive at the basement shelter tomorrow to give an update on what the city has accomplished over the past seven months.

Located in an alley off Stewart Street, below a cafe and a designer tile store, Hammond House has been full practically since the night it opened last month, said Kim Sather, the program director.

But measuring just how effective the programs have been is difficult. Schell might point to figures from Operation Nightwatch - often the shelter of last resort - showing the number of women and children turned away fell from 61 in October to 31 in November.

But that is just one snapshot of the problem.

The best guess is between 4,500 and 5,500 homeless people are in a shelter or on the street every night in King County, the vast majority in Seattle. Of those, about one-third are women and children.

There are shelters, transitional housing and motel vouchers to cover about 3,500 of the homeless, according to the Seattle King County Coalition for the Homeless.

Operation Nightwatch found 64 women and three children on the Seattle streets during its annual one-night count of homeless in October. But, Sather pointed out "women are going to be hard to find."

"They are at the airport, they are at the bus depot, they are riding Metro all night long, they are anywhere they can't be seen."

City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck, who heads the council's housing committee, said focusing on homeless women and children was an important step for Schell.

"The perception of a lot of people was he was going to be a pro-development sort of mayor," he said. "But I think in small ways he has been showing there is more depth to him than that."